Let's Do This

So much for staying on schedule during the semester.

>.<

Mostly my excuse yesterday was that we had another doctor's appointment which was down in Denver.  It amazes me how we're an hour away but going down there is a half day ordeal.  The appointment went well other than I really did not like the doctor who came in after the tech did my ultrasound.  Pretty sure D didn't like her either.  How could you like someone bouncing the ultrasound thing on your home to try and get you to move around.  

Truthfully, I was pissed.

So by the time I got home I was exhausted.  Then again by about 5 or 6 in the evening any day I'm wiped (stupid classes in the tops of buildings) and doing anything other than sitting on the couch takes entirely too much energy, haha!

Found out today that I will have to sit out on some activities in my photo class.  It's all about alternative ways to process photos so we're working with several chemicals and while most won't hurt me as long as I'm wearing gloves and not drinking the developer (doesn't print developer just sound scrumptious?) I'll be just fine.  I will, however have to miss out on some fairly noxious processes like Gum Bichromate, which is uber fascinating but I can always give it a go after the little one is born.  But there is lots I will be able to do and I can't wait to make pinhole cameras out of all sorts of ridiculous objects which will be one of our first projects.

My other classes seem like they'll be good, fairly easy.

*runs off to knock on wood and runs back*

Which I'm hoping will hold true as another one of my courses is me focusing solely on my portfolio.  My senior portfolio that needs to be spectacular enough that they'll be like yes we feel confident you can go off in the world and be a photographer.

*deep breaths*

This is what's scaring me most.  I gotta pick a direction for my art.  Up until now it's been try a little of this and a little of that and make discoveries and have fun.  Now it's figure out what I want my photography to say about me.  My art has to speak for me and what I'm about.  It needs to have a discernible style.  So John looked at me today and said he needed me to do some serious soul searching.

*gulp*

I know it's true but damn it scares me.  I also know I can always later change directions.  Artists change style all the time but I've been trying to choose a direction for a year and I'm still drawing a blank.  This is also why my photography site has sat for months without me adding anything.

Well that and I need to reinstall my tablet driver because suddenly my laptop hates my guts.

*headdesk*

Which is the goal for tomorrow afternoon/night and then this weekend is crazy photo editing time so I can get discs to two of my girls who were awesome models for me last semester as well as get some new material on my site and take something to John next week and say okay this is what I've been up to and now I need your professional opinion.  Which I would get whether I wanted it or not but it's crunch time and I need to lay it all out on the line.

*deep breath*

Alright last semester of my college career....

Let's do this.

Destroying Ourselves

Alright... so I wrote this a while back and it's long and ranty & probably doesn't even make sense by the end because I'm terrible at keeping my ideas organized, my essays in college are horrific.  So yeah... Just a warning.

Again I'm taking a Women's Studies course.  Not my favorite class by a long shot.  Well today we were talking about how media affects women and then how it's just women being oppressed more and more.  (a little of which I believe is someone reading into ads a little too much, but whatever)  I hate this class simply because it feels like 24/7 male bashing.  It's also full of poor unsuspecting little freshies who are fresh out of Mommy & Daddy's arms to the big world on their own to develop their own ideas and opinions and they're having this crap shoved into their impressionable little heads.

*headdesk*

Yes, let's teach women to hate men, that sounds like a great idea.

Maybe I'm odd. I married a man who every day tells me I'm beautiful and looks at me with nothing but love.  (balls, now I'm tearing up, lol)  I'm not saying that women aren't oppressed or being treated unfairly in the world.  Yes I'm angered by the fact that I only make 74 cents or so to every dollar a man makes, that's unfair BUT I don't feel this is only the fault of men.  I'm also angry that women are expected to be rail thin and perfect, but this also isn't only by the fault of men.  They don't deserve to have all of that placed on their heads.

Women are largely responsible for the pressure on women to look "perfect".  Don't believe me?  Come on ladies let's be HONEST here, we've ALL done this.

You're with friends and a skinny "good looking" woman (by America's current standards) walks by.  What gets said?

Things like:

"Those can NOT be real"

"There's no way you can eat and still be that skinny"

"That's not natural."

Now a thicker woman walks by:

"Someone eats their feelings."

"Has she looked in a mirror?"

"She can't be happy looking like that."

I know this happens because I myself am guilty and I have overheard other women say these types of things every damn day.  We have all at one point talked shit about another woman for her looks for one reason or another.  We are more guilty than anyone for what ads have come to represent.

A Twitter friend Nanti_SARRMM sent me this article while I was ranting and raving on Twitter (poor Tweeps who follow me get that kind of stuff a lot, lol) Worthless Women and the Men Who Create Them and it's a great blog by a man and how they make women feel worthless and how they need to make a change to their behavior to help women realize they are NOT worthless.  And yeah, men are partially responsible for women and their skewed vision of themselves and other women, but they're not the whole problem.  Women are ridiculously critical of each other and ourselves.  I think we've all seen something we've pointed out on someone else in ourselves, which then just makes us feel worthless.

So my point, which sounded really good in my head but now doesn't seem to be being made very well as I write this, is that men are not the only ones responsible for women having a terrible self image of themselves.  Women are just as much, if not MORE, responsible than men.  ALSO, men feel pressures of advertising too.  How often is a man in an ad without a shirt, a guy that doesn't have a 6 pack?  Yeah, almost NEVER.  Both men and women are being shown what someone (who needs their damn head examined) thinks is the ideal man or woman every day.  It's all over TV, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and the internet.  Pretty much unless you're blind, or maybe Amish or something, you're going to see these things every day of your life.

and...

/rant.

Please, tell me what you think.  Are you a guy constantly feeling the pressure to be a muscular stud?  A woman sick & tired of not even being able to feel comfortable in her own skin because society keeps telling her that a healthy weight makes you unhappy?  Who do you blame?  A week or so ago my photo prof mentioned readers being upset with Sports Illustrated for using healthier models and how they lost business as a result.  Who's responsible?

World Class Hissy Fit

I watched my professor play drama queen and throw a hissy fit of epic proportions today.

Now really even though his classes are my hardest one (and are two of the three that are making my life a complete and total hell this semester) he is one of my favorite professors.  He tends to flip out a lot.  Normally after paper & exam time because "were just not absorbing the info" etc.  Well his classes is kind of ridiculous expectation-wise some times.  Actually most of the time.  He's one of those that acts like his class is your only class with the way he loads work on.  Seriously we we're supposed to have read a huge-ass book for one of the two classes and I could barely get it started by the time paper time rolled around.

So after we all do particularly horrible on our tests he yells.  Guess one class he even made them put their heads down like they did in grade school, remember that?? *shudders*  I hated the smell of those desks and the germs... *gags*  So honestly I haven't had to experience that, thank the gods above, but yeah he does a lot of yelling.

Well he's already been complaining about how terrible our papers are in my Japanese history class today.  So in our first class of the day we were watching a movie and I can see he's standing there during the movie grading them.  This is when the fit came in.  He's up there reading and making huge disgusted faces, mumbling, mouthing curses and making exaggerated marks with his little red pen.

I lost a lot of respect for him.

He yells about this being college and not high school all the time, but that?  That right there was straight up elementary.  I'm super disappointed in him.  And uber happy that I was dumb and agreed to cover a shift during my Japanese history class so I'll be missing the yelling that will probably take half of the class period if not more.

I understand being mad but if you're students are all doing that horribly maybe, just maybe, you should look to yourself and see what you're not explaining well enough.  Sure asking your peers to check your page about the paper to see if they can understand it is great but they are not college kids anymore.  Most of them probably have doctorates and barely remember their first 1-4 years of college...

Js.

Art History Final- Survived.

So our professor for our Art History class is also a professor at CSU and they're still in classes this week or he had a final there at the same time or something so he said we'd have a sub. "So if you walk in and someone else is standing here, don't freak out." Lol. This prof was awesome but the material and tests were a total bitch. Like stab yourself in the eye just to have an excuse for sucking on the test, hard kind of tests. We're jamming tons of artwork, artists and art periods all on one test. This final was over- 17 art periods (all of which we need to know the time period for), 80 artists and 82 artworks (there were more talked about but slides to study was only 82). Yeah, pain.

So our tests are a bunch of multiple choice of identifying an artworks either art period, date, or artist as well as a few multiple choice of just random info like "What psychiatrist's work inspired the artists of the ___ period?". Then there is the dreaded essay in which we have two artworks which we much compare and contrast in addition to knowing the artist, art period and dates.

So our sub was Chip, who is probably the most hilarious prof in the entire university, no joke. He collects shoes. Yes HE collects shoes and he has quite the impressive collection of funky colored sneakers. I once watched him teach a student how to knock on a door. He opens the door, tells her to stay right there and then do what they talked about. He shuts the door and she knocks. Then he opens the door and says "Hey! How are you, come on in!" Then says "See how that works?" and I almost fell of the floor in laughter. It was nothing less than amazing.

With that being said, here (finally) is the funnies from today's final. Chip cracked a few jokes here and there "oh this is definitely Monet" on works that weren't, etc. Then the best comment all day was made.

One of the multiple choice questions was this work by Jeff Koons:



And Chip says "Oh those Italian pornstars" and the entire room erupts into laughter. Some of us are even giggling three slides later. It was epic.

Then comes the essay and yay I knew both of the works, their time period and their date and one of the artist's name. Crap. So I shit you not this is what I wrote:

The first work is a feminist work by a woman whose name escapes me at this point and time. Heh, oops. So then I just kept referring to it as "the feminist work" and then as I'm finishing the last paragraph, BAM! Barbara Kruger! So I go back and go to change it and realize how lengthy my little sentence was, and hoping that my prof and his sense of humor can appreciate my intial effort merely cross out (with one line) my orginal statement from "a woman" on and write her name above it. Hope he gets a laugh out of it anyway, I know I sure did.

Mental Exhaustion

I had to take a break from my attempt at homework. I have to vent and do it quick or I may explode. Warning- my sailor mouth is exposed in this post.

My day has been crap. Migraine which I fought all day, and having to go print photos in a brightly lit room while staring at a computer screen was not helping at all. Then I've finally got it down to a dull roar so I can work on other stuff and I'm so damn stressed I can't focus. I keep bouncing from one thing to another and I'm not getting a damn thing done as a result. I keep bursting into tears, which definitely isn't helping matters either.

So I have a little "interview final" due in Japanese tomorrow. Sensei will ask questions and I have to answer them. Simple right? Yeah you'd think so other than the questions are in Japanese and I'm having a hell of a time translating them, and well without knowing what the question is asking it's a bit hard to answer it. Don't tell me to try online translators either. I've tried them all and nothing ever fucking works and I've had it.

Then I have a final photo project due tomorrow which I'm stressing hardcore. Still not sure how I want to present it and what's in my head looks spectacular, if only I had the means to make it reality. Then I'd like to have resubmitted some photos from previous projects and done extra credit for this one as well but it just ain't happenin'.

Then on top of all that I'm pretty well failing Art History III. That class if fucking ridiculous hard. As in I don't know how anyone that doesn't have a perfect photographic memory could ever pass with anything more than a freaking C. Oh the best part? I have to pass it with a B. _^&!_#^&!#(_^&(@#&^!!!!!!!!!! So I decided to do all the possible extra credit available, which is a whole 4 art work comparison that will help me out with 40 test percentage points, which may help had I not failed two of the three tests we've taken. It would also help me out greatly if I could just stop bursting into tears from the stress so I could read the damn textbook and see the computer screen in order to write it. At this point it would be better if I could fail it outright, then at least I could do grade forgiveness...

Then on top of it all my dumbass agreed to do a party tomorrow evening. Why? I'm a glutton for punishment apparently. Normally it's something I look forward to. I get to have fun, crack jokes about sex, educate women on keeping things spicy and make a some money while I'm at it, yet I'm so stressed out that even that joy has been sucked from my life.

Pretty much I hate everything right now.

Also, feel sorry for my husband who sat here all evening, watching me burst into tears every little bit and not knowing what the hell he could do to help. Poor man.